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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

"Luck" is about the only thing interesting in the racing biz these days, and sadly, I can't watch it. I don't have HBO … and it airs past my bedtime. The Derby trail is about as interesting as talking about who will win next year's Super Bowl. Too soon to tell.

I love the reaction of the industry insiders to the show. Some spout how great it is, just read Daily Racing Form's Andrew Beyer's review from a few weeks ago. In it he glows that it's "authentic." From what I hear, I agree. His perspective is that of a horse player and that's how he opens his piece, diving headlong into a live Pick 6 ticket. Whatever that's like, I'll never know, but there's a magnet we're all attracted to and the horse player has his Pick 6.

Then there's the other side, the folks who don't like it. The folks would be insulted by the way horse racing is depicted on the screen. Enter the legendary syndicate maven, Dogwood's Cot Campbell. His fear, and looking at the view from his chair, is understandable, but I feel a bit unreasonable. His fear is that the subtext, jargon, and depiction of "Luck's" horse racing culture is far too abrasive to bring in new fans.

"Thoroughbred racing is certainly in need of exposure - other than Derby time - but I cannot drum up any enthusiasm for the material that is being provided by this new Sunday night cable series," he writes. "Heavily reviewed and promoted, it is being seen by a great many people. And, if I were a novice, and got a glimpse of Luck, I would not want to go anywhere near a racetrack. And, also, if I were a novice, I would also not know what the hell the characters were talking about."

The show's creator, David Milch, has loved the racetrack his whole life and sees it for what it is: a cross section of character. It's even a little racy, a little dodgy, a bit unwholesome. Heck, Mount Doom was no picnic for Frodo, but every hamlet needs a shadow.

Mr. Campbell proceeds, “Dogwood Stable through the years has brought about 1,200 new people into racing. But, if these people had been exposed to the HBO series Luck, that number would not have totaled 200.”

Since Dogwood’s founding in 1969—a span of 43 years—it has brought a total of 27.9 new owners to the sport every year. Impressive. But I doubt “Luck” will have any influence over new skin buying into a share of the next big stud. There’s something to be said of the person who has enough scratch to buy a horse: they’ll buy one no matter what. It’s ego, even if it is a transparent cry for attention.

Everybody is always trying to fix the sport. But it needs to embrace its menial place in the landscape of American popularity. The people who already like it will pass it on. They are your ambassadors. Embrace them and the sport will float on inches above the ground.

In life there are winners and there are losers. Losing is okay; it's the only way to measure winning. Horse racing puts food on the tables of a few very wealthy folks, but for everyone else it’s as seedy as “Luck” presumably makes it out to be.

Speaking of “Luck” reviews, I read one in the Hollywood Reporter several weeks back that made a comparison between it and “The Wire,” also heavily and favorably reviewed.

The Wire took place in the poorest section of Baltimore where many people of color, most of them African American, lived and labored among the drug trafficking business.

The point the HR piece made was that for the entire first season, viewers hardly understood what was being said; it was ethnic and drug speak, an entirely different language.

This is called reality TV, only the kind that requires thinking--like handicapping does, as compared to what masses seem to prefer; button pushing and staring.

What David Milch does is known as art. From “Hill Street Blues” to “The Wire” to “Luck,” it’s always been about texture and realism. Reviewers call this kind of depiction riveting.

Luck isn’t for everyone, just like racing. It is the industry’s job to attract fans, not the artist, whose only concern is dramatic storylines, as it should be.

Kudos to Milch for what, in the main, is an honest depiction of life on the racetrack. There are a few nitpik track-specific things with which to take issue, but not the art.

The attitude of the characters, right down to Escalante’s vet--where’s she been all my life?--is, like it or not, pitch perfect. And thank you Mr. Milch for not dumbing any of it down. I made this point in my own review after the original pilot first aired: You don’t choose racing; racing chooses you. Either you “get it” or you don’t.

Lifelong racing fan and self-described degenerate--many racetrackers actually use that expression as a term of endearment occasionally--Milch gets it. The viewer can take it or leave it.

JP

P.S. I also happen to be a very big fan of Cot and Anne Campbell. And isn’t this what racing’s all about?

Pretty sure that white powder was from the inside of the painkillers the doc had prescribed after he broke his collarbone.

It doesn’t make it right, then I’m not a jockey whose broken his collarbone more times recently than he’s made love, so I can’t judge.

What I found more upsetting was Jenkins walking into a liquor story and asking for a pint of Cutty, his real nemesis, according to his agent--and saying “hesse, it’s C-U-T-T-Y,” before handing him a rolled-up snorting instrument.

JP

Wonder who’s going to get the mount on the “old man’s” big horse. I know it won’t be Castellano, he’s got too many big horses already.

I, too, don’t have access to HBO, so my knowledge of “Luck” is limited to brief excerpts and trailers. I also read Mr. Campbell’s commentary on the series. I respect his opinion, but I also suspect if the series was in production when he was first building the limited partnerships in race horses that he pioneered so successfully, as a former “ad man”, I have no doubt he would have found a clever way to push the positive and thrilling side of racing and horse ownership successfully to his prospective partners. Certainly, one can’t argue with the spectacle that has been broadcast annually on television for well more than 50 years on the first Saturday in May. If the sport was so dark and dirty universally, the major television networks wouldn’t have been involved as readily and helped to build the enduring image of the Kentucky Derby as “the most exciting two minutes in sports” anywhere near as effectively.

From what I understand, Mr. Milch’s “Luck” is a gritty drama for adult audiences shown on HBO, not a family-oriented storyline geared for the Disney Channel. If its depictions come close to part of the reality that is racing, then I see no real harm there. The sport is far bigger than one made-for-TV drama series, just as “The Sopranos” depicted one slice of life for a select group of characters living in New Jersey. It didn’t define the whole state, nor does “Luck” define the entire sport of horse racing by any stretch...no pun intended.

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